The station and hotel at Sicamous Junction, overlooking the lovely Mara
lake, were full of people--busy officials of different kinds, or excited
on-lookers--when Anderson reached them. The long summer day was just
passing into a night that was rather twilight than darkness, and in the
lower country the heat was great. Far away to the north stretched the
wide and straggling waters of another and larger lake. Woods of poplar
and cottonwood grew along its swampy shore, and hills, forest clad, held
it in a shallow cup flooded with the mingled light of sunset and
moonlight.
Anderson was met by a district superintendent, of the name of Dixon, as
he descended from the train. The young man, with whom he was slightly
acquainted, looked at him with excitement.
"This is a precious bad business! If you can throw any light upon it,
Mr. Anderson, we shall be uncommonly obliged to you--"
Anderson interrupted him.
"Is the inquest to be held here?"
"Certainly. The bodies were brought in a few hours ago."
His companion pointed to a shed beyond the station. They walked thither,
the Superintendent describing in detail the attack on the train and the
measures taken for the capture of the marauders, Anderson listening in
silence. The affair had taken place early that morning, but the
telegraph wires had been cut in several places on both sides of the
damaged line, so that no precise news of what had happened had reached
either Vancouver on the west, or Golden on the east, till the afternoon.
The whole countryside was now in movement, and a vigorous man-hunt was
proceeding on both sides of the line.
"There is no doubt the whole thing was planned by a couple of men from
Montana, one of whom was certainly concerned in the hold-up there a few
months ago and got clean away. But there were six or seven of them
altogether and most of the rest--we suspect--from this side of the
boundary. The old man who was killed"--Anderson raised his eyes abruptly
to the speaker--"seems to have come from Nevada. There were some
cuttings from a Nevada newspaper found upon him, besides the envelope
addressed to you, of which I sent you word at Roger's Pass. Could you
recognise anything in my description of the man? There was one thing I
forgot to say. He had evidently been in the doctor's hands lately. There
is a surgical bandage on the right ankle."
"Was there nothing in the envelope?" asked Anderson, putting the
question aside, in spite of the evident eagerness of the questioner.
"Nothing."
"And where is it?"
"It was given to the Kamloops coroner, who has just arrived." Anderson
said nothing more. They had reached the shed, which his companion
unlocked. Inside were two rough tables on trestles and lying on them two
sheeted forms.
Dixon uncovered the first, and Anderson looked steadily down at the face
underneath. Death had wrought its strange ironic miracle once more, and
out of the face of an outcast had made the face of a sage. There was
little disfigurement; the eyes were closed with dignity; the mouth
seemed to have unlearnt its coarseness. Silently the tension of
Anderson's inner being gave way; he was conscious of a passionate
acceptance of the mere stillness and dumbness of death.
"Where was the wound?" he asked, stooping over the body.
"Ah, that was the strange thing! He didn't die of his wound at all! It
was a mere graze on the arm." The Superintendent pointed to a rent on
the coat-sleeve. "He died of something quite different--perhaps
excitement and a weak heart. There may have to be a post-mortem."
"I doubt whether that will be necessary," said Anderson.
The other looked at him with undisguised curiosity.
"Then you do recognise him?"
"I will tell the coroner what I know."
Anderson drew back from his close examination of the dead face, and
began in his turn to question the Superintendent. Was it certain that
this man had been himself concerned in the hold-up and in the struggle
with the police?
Dixon could not see how there could be any doubt of it. The constables
who had rushed in upon the gang while they were still looting the
express car--the brakesman having managed to get away and convey the
alarm to Kamloops--remembered seeing an old man with white hair,
apparently lame, at the rear of the more active thieves, and posted as
sentinel. He had been the first to give warning of the police approach,
and had levelled his revolver at the foremost constable but had missed
his shot. In the free firing which had followed nobody exactly knew what
had happened. One of the attacking force, Constable Brown, had fallen,
and while his comrades were attempting to save him, the thieves had
dropped down the steep bank of the river close by, into a boat waiting
for them, and got off. The constable was left dead upon the ground, and
not far from him lay the old man, also lifeless. But when they came to
examine the bodies, while the constable was shot through the head, the
other had received nothing but the trifling wound Dixon had already
pointed out.
Anderson listened to the story in silence. Then with a last long look at
the rigid features below him, he replaced the covering. Passing on to
the other table, he raised the sheet from the face of a splendid young
Englishman, whom he had last seen the week before at Regina; an English
public-school boy of the manliest type, full of hope for himself, and of
enthusiasm, both for Canada and for the fine body of men in which he had
been just promoted. For the first time a stifled groan escaped from
Anderson's lips. What hand had done this murder?
They left the shed. Anderson inquired what doctor had been sent for. He
recognised the name given as that of a Kamloops man whom he knew and
respected; and he went on to look for him at the hotel.
For some time he and the doctor paced a trail beside the line together.
Among other facts that Anderson got from this conversation, he learnt
that the American authorities had been telegraphed to, and that a couple
of deputy sheriffs were coming to assist the Canadian police. They were
expected the following morning, when also the coroner's inquest would
be held.
As to Anderson's own share in the interview, when the two men parted,
with a silent grasp of the hand, the Doctor had nothing to say to the
bystanders, except that Mr. Anderson would have some evidence to give on
the morrow, and that, for himself, he was not at liberty to divulge what
had passed between them.
It was by this time late. Anderson shut himself up in his room at the
hotel; but among the groups lounging at the bar or in the neighbourhood
of the station excitement and discussion ran high. The envelope
addressed to Anderson, Anderson's own demeanour since his arrival on the
scene--with the meaning of both conjecture was busy.
* * * * *
Towards midnight a train arrived from Field. A messenger from the
station knocked at Anderson's door with a train letter. Anderson locked
the door again behind the man who had brought it, and stood looking at
it a moment in silence. It was from Lady Merton. He opened it slowly,
took it to the small deal table, which held a paraffin lamp, and sat
down to read it.
"Dear Mr. Anderson--Mr. Delaine has given me your message and
read me some of your letter to him. He has also told me what
he knew before this happened--we understood that you wished
it. Oh! I cannot say how very sorry we are, Philip and I, for
your great trouble. It makes me sore at heart to think that
all the time you have been looking after us so kindly, taking
this infinite pains for us, you have had this heavy anxiety
on your mind. Oh, why didn't you tell me! I thought we were
to be friends. And now this tragedy! It is
terrible--terrible! Your father has been his own worst
enemy--and at last death has come,--and he has escaped
himself. Is there not some comfort in that? And you tried to
save him. I can imagine all that you have been doing and
planning for him. It is not lost, dear Mr. Anderson. No love
and pity are ever lost. They are undying--for they are God's
life in us. They are the pledge--the sign--to which He is
eternally bound. He will surely, surely, redeem--and fulfil.
"I write incoherently, for they are waiting for my letter. I
want you to write to me, if you will. And when will you come
back to us? We shall, I think, be two or three days here, for
Philip has made friends with a man we have met here--a
surveyor, who has been camping high up, and shooting wild
goat. He is determined to go for an expedition with him, and
I had to telegraph to the Lieutenant-Governor to ask him not
to expect us till Thursday. So if you were to come back here
before then you would still find us. I don't know that I
could be of any use to you, or any consolation to you. But,
indeed, I would try.
"To-morrow I am told will be the inquest. My thoughts will be
with you constantly. By now you will have determined on your
line of action. I only know that it will be noble and
upright--like yourself.
"I remain, yours most sincerely"
"ELIZABETH MERTON."
Anderson pressed the letter to his lips. Its tender philosophising found
no echo in his own mind. But it soothed, because it came from her.
He lay dressed and wakeful on his bed through the night, and at nine
next morning the inquest opened, in the coffee-room of the hotel.
The body of the young constable was first identified. As to the hand
which had fired the shot that killed him, there was no certain evidence;
one of the police had seen the lame man with the white hair level his
revolver again after the first miss; but there was much shooting going
on, and no one could be sure from what quarter the fatal bullet
had come.
The court then proceeded to the identification of the dead robber. The
coroner, a rancher who bred the best horses in the district, called
first upon two strangers in plain clothes, who had arrived by the first
train from the South that morning. They proved to be the two officers
from Nevada. They had already examined the body, and they gave clear and
unhesitating evidence, identifying the old man as one Alexander McEwen,
well known to the police of the silver-mining State as a lawless and
dangerous character. He had been twice in jail, and had been the
associate of the notorious Bill Symonds in one or two criminal affairs
connected with "faked" claims and the like. The elder of the two
officers in particular drew a vivid and damning picture of the man's
life and personality, of the cunning with which he had evaded the law,
and the ruthlessness with which he had avenged one or two
private grudges.
"We have reason to suppose," said the American officer finally, "that
McEwen was not originally a native of the States. We believe that he
came from Dawson City or the neighbourhood about ten years ago, and that
he crossed the border in consequence of a mysterious affair--which has
never been cleared up--in which a rich German gentleman, Baron von
Aeschenbach, disappeared, and has not been heard of since. Of that,
however, we have no proof, and we cannot supply the court with any
information as to the man's real origin and early history. But we are
prepared to swear that the body we have seen this morning is that of
Alexander McEwen, who for some years past has been well known to us, now
in one camp, now in another, of the Comstock district."
The American police officer resumed his seat. George Anderson, who was
to the right of the coroner, had sat, all through this witness's
evidence, bending forward, his eyes on the ground, his hands clasped
between his knees. There was something in the rigidity of his attitude,
which gradually compelled the attention of the onlookers, as though the
perception gained ground that here--in that stillness--those bowed
shoulders--lay the real interest of this sordid outrage, which had so
affronted the pride of Canada's great railway.
The coroner rose. He briefly expressed the thanks of the court to the
Nevada State authorities for having so promptly supplied the information
in their possession in regard to this man McEwen. He would now ask Mr.
George Anderson, of the C.P.R., whether he could in any way assist the
court in this investigation. An empty envelope, fully addressed to Mr.
George Anderson, Ginnell's Boarding House, Laggan, Alberta, had,
strangely enough, been found in McEwen's pocket. Could Mr. Anderson
throw any light upon the matter?
Anderson stood up as the coroner handed him the envelope. He took it,
looked at it, and slowly put it down on the table before him. He was
perfectly composed, but there was that in his aspect which instantly
hushed all sounds in the crowded room, and drew the eyes of everybody in
it upon him. The Kamloops doctor looked at him from a distance with a
sudden twitching smile--the smile of a reticent man in whom strong
feeling must somehow find a physical expression. Dixon, the young
Superintendent, bent forward eagerly. At the back of the room a group of
Japanese railway workers, with their round, yellow faces and half-opened
eyes stared impassively at the tall figure of the fair-haired Canadian;
and through windows and doors, thrown open to the heat, shimmered lake
and forest, the eternal background of Canada.
"Mr. Coroner," said Anderson, straightening himself to his full height,
"the name of the man into whose death you are inquiring is not Alexander
McEwen. He came from Scotland to Manitoba in 1869. His real name was
Robert Anderson, and I--am his son."
The coroner gave an involuntary "Ah!" of amazement, which was echoed, it
seemed, throughout the room.
On one of the small deal tables belonging to the coffee-room, which had
been pushed aside to make room for the sitting of the court, lay the
newspapers of the morning--the _Vancouver Sentinel_ and the _Montreal
Star_. Both contained short and flattering articles on the important
Commission entrusted to Mr. George Anderson by the Prime Minister. "A
great compliment to so young a man," said the _Star_, "but one amply
deserved by Mr. Anderson's record. We look forward on his behalf to a
brilliant career, honourable both to himself and to Canada."
Several persons had already knocked at Anderson's door early that
morning in order to congratulate him; but without finding him. And this
honoured and fortunate person--?
Men pushed each other forward in their eagerness not to lose a word, or
a shade of expression on the pale face which confronted them.
Anderson, after a short pause, as though to collect himself, gave the
outlines of his father's early history, of the farm in Manitoba, the
fire and its consequences, the breach between Robert Anderson and his
sons. He described the struggle of the three boys on the farm, their
migration to Montreal in search of education, and his own later sojourn
in the Yukon, with the evidence which had convinced him of his
father's death.
"Then, only a fortnight ago, he appeared at Laggan and made himself
known to me, having followed me apparently from Winnipeg. He seemed to
be in great poverty, and in bad health. If he had wished it, I was
prepared to acknowledge him; but he seemed not to wish it; there were no
doubt reasons why he preferred to keep his assumed name. I did what I
could for him, and arrangements had been made to put him with decent
people at Vancouver. But last Wednesday night he disappeared from the
boarding house where he and I were both lodging, and various persons
here will know"--he glanced at one or two faces in the ring before
him--"that I have been making inquiries since, with no result. As to
what or who led him into this horrible business, I know nothing. The
Nevada deputies have told you that he was acquainted with Symonds--a
fact unknown to me--and I noticed on one or two occasions that he seemed
to have acquaintances among the men tramping west to the Kootenay
district. I can only imagine that after his success in Montana last
year, Symonds made up his mind to try the same game on the C.P.R., and
that during the last fortnight he came somehow into communication with
my father. My father must have been aware of Symonds's plans--and may
have been unable at the last to resist the temptation to join in the
scheme. As to all that I am entirely in the dark."
He paused, and then, looking down, he added, under his breath, as though
involuntarily--"I pray--that he may not have been concerned in the
murder of poor Brown. But there is--I think--no evidence to connect him
with it. I shall be glad to answer to the best of my power any questions
that the court may wish to put."
He sat down heavily, very pale, but entirely collected. The room watched
him a moment, and then a friendly, encouraging murmur seemed to rise
from the crowd--to pass from them to Anderson.
The coroner, who was an old friend of Anderson's, fidgeted a little and
in silence. He took off his glasses and put them on again. His tanned
face, long and slightly twisted, with square harsh brows, and powerful
jaw set in a white fringe of whisker, showed an unusual amount of
disturbance. At last he said, clearing his throat: "We are much obliged
to you, Mr. Anderson, for your frankness towards this court. There's
not a man here that don't feel for you, and don't wish to offer you his
respectful sympathy. We know you--and I reckon we know what to think
about you. Gentlemen," he spoke with nasal deliberation, looking round
the court, "I think that's so?"
A shout of consent--the shout of men deeply moved--went up. Anderson,
who had resumed his former attitude, appeared to take no notice, and the
coroner resumed.
"I will now call on Mrs. Ginnell to give her evidence."
The Irishwoman rose with alacrity--what she had to say held the
audience. The surly yet good-hearted creature was divided between her
wish to do justice to the demerits of McEwen, whom she had detested, and
her fear of hurting Anderson's feelings in public. Beneath her rough
exterior, she carried some of the delicacies of Celtic feeling, and she
had no sooner given some fact that showed the coarse dishonesty of the
father, than she veered off in haste to describe the pathetic efforts of
the son. Her homely talk told; the picture grew.
Meanwhile Anderson sat impatient or benumbed, annoyed with Mrs.
Ginnell's garrulity, and longing for the whole thing to end. He had a
letter to write to Ottawa before post-time.
When the verdicts had been given, the doctor and he walked away from
the court together. The necessary formalities were carried through, a
coffin ordered, and provision made for the burial of Robert Anderson. As
the two men passed once or twice through the groups now lounging and
smoking as before outside the hotel, all conversation ceased, and all
eyes followed Anderson. Sincere pity was felt for him; and at the same
time men asked each other anxiously how the revelation would affect his
political and other chances.
Late in the same evening the burial of McEwen took place. A
congregational minister at the graveside said a prayer for mercy on the
sinner. Anderson had not asked him to do it, and felt a dull resentment
of the man's officiousness, and the unctious length of his prayer. Half
an hour later he was on the platform, waiting for the train to Glacier.
He arrived there in the first glorious dawn of a summer morning. Over
the vast Illecillowaet glacier rosy feather-clouds were floating in a
crystal air, beneath a dome of pale blue. Light mists rose from the
forests and the course of the river, and above them shone the dazzling
snows, the hanging glaciers, and glistening rock faces, ledge piled on
ledge, of the Selkirk giants--Hermit and Tupper, Avalanche and Sir
Donald--with that cleft of the pass between.
The pleasant hotel, built to offer as much shelter and comfort as
possible to the tired traveller and climber, was scarcely awake. A
sleepy-eyed Japanese showed Anderson to his room. He threw himself on
the bed, longing for sleep, yet incapable of it. He was once more under
the same roof with Elizabeth Merton--and for the last time! He longed
for her presence, her look, her touch; and yet with equal intensity he
shrank from seeing her. That very morning through the length of Canada
and the States would go out the news of the train-robbery on the main
line of the C.P.R., and with it the "dramatic" story of himself and his
father, made more dramatic by a score of reporters. And as the news of
his appointment, in the papers of the day before, had made him a public
person, and had been no doubt telegraphed to London and Europe, so also
would it be with the news of the "hold-up," and his own connection with
it; partly because it had happened on the C.P.R.; still more because of
the prominence given to his name the day before.
He felt himself a disgraced man; and he had already put from him all
thought of a public career. Yet he wondered, not without self-contempt,
as he lay there in the broadening light, what it was in truth that made
the enormous difference between this Monday and the Monday before. His
father was dead, and had died in the very commission of a criminal act.
But all or nearly all that Anderson knew now about his character he had
known before this happened. The details given by the Nevada officers
were indeed new to him; but he had shrewdly suspected all along that the
record, did he know it, would be something like that. If such a
parentage in itself involves stain and degradation, the stain and
degradation had been always there, and the situation, looked at
philosophically, was no worse for the catastrophe which had intervened
between this week and last.
And yet it was of course immeasurably worse! Such is the "bubble
reputation"--the difference between the known and the unknown.
At nine o'clock a note was brought to his room:
"Will you breakfast with me in half an hour? You will find me
alone.
"E.M."
Before the clock struck the half-hour, Elizabeth was already waiting for
her guest, listening for every sound. She too had been awake half
the night.
When he came in she went up to him, with her quick-tripping step,
holding out both her hands; and he saw that her eyes were full of tears.
"I am so--so sorry!" was all she could say. He looked into her eyes,
and as her hands lay in his he stooped suddenly and kissed them. There
was a great piteousness in his expression, and she felt through every
nerve the humiliation and the moral weariness which oppressed him.
Suddenly she recalled that first moment of intimacy between them when he
had so brusquely warned her about Philip, and she had been wounded by
his mere strength and fearlessness; and it hurt her to realise the
contrast between that strength and this weakness.
She made him sit down beside her in the broad window of her little
sitting-room, which over-looked the winding valley with the famous loops
of the descending railway, and the moving light and shade on the forest;
and very gently and tenderly she made him tell her all the story from
first to last.
His shrinking passed away, soothed by her sweetness, her restrained
emotion, and after a little he talked with freedom, gradually recovering
his normal steadiness and clearness of mind.
At the same time she perceived some great change in him. The hidden
spring of melancholy in his nature, which, amid all his practical
energies and activities, she had always discerned, seemed to have
overleaped its barriers, and to be invading the landmarks of character.
At the end of his narrative he said something in a hurried, low voice
which gave her a clue.
"I did what I could to help him--but my father hated me. He died hating
me. Nothing I could do altered him. Had he reason? When my brother and I
in our anger thought we were avenging our mother's death, were we in
truth destroying him also--driving him into wickedness beyond hope? Were
we--was I--for I was the eldest--responsible? Does his death, moral and
physical, lie at my door?"
He raised his eyes to her--his tired appealing eyes--and Elizabeth
realised sharply how deep a hold such questionings take on such a man.
She tried to argue with and comfort him--and he seemed to absorb, to
listen--but in the middle of it, he said abruptly, as though to change
the subject:
"And I confess the publicity has hit me hard. It may be cowardly, but I
can't face it for a while. I think I told you I owned some land in
Saskatchewan. I shall go and settle down on it at once."
"And give up your appointment--your public life?" she cried in dismay.
He smiled at her faintly, as though trying to console her.
"Yes; I shan't be missed, and I shall do better by myself. I understand
the wheat and the land. They are friends that don't fail one."
Elizabeth flushed.
"Mr. Anderson!--you mustn't give up your work. Canada asks it of you."
"I shall only be changing my work. A man can do nothing better for
Canada than break up land."
"You can do that--and other things besides. Please--please--do nothing
rash!"
She bent over to him, her brown eyes full of entreaty, her hand laid
gently, timidly on his.
He could not bear to distress her--but he must.
"I sent in my resignation yesterday to the Prime Minister."
The delicate face beside him clouded.
"He won't accept it."
Anderson shook his head. "I think he must."
Elizabeth looked at him in despair.
"Oh! no. You oughtn't to do this--indeed, indeed you oughtn't. It is
cowardly--forgive me!--unworthy of you. Oh! can't you see how the
sympathy of everybody who knows--everybody whose opinion you care for--"
She stopped a moment, colouring deeply, checked indeed by the thought of
a conversation between herself and Philip of the night before. Anderson
interrupted her:
"The sympathy of one person," he said hoarsely, "is very precious to
me. But even for her--"
She held out her hands to him again imploringly--
"Even for her?--"
But instead of taking the hands he rose and went out on the balcony a
moment, as though to look at the great view. Then he returned, and
stood over her.
"Lady Merton, I am afraid--it's no use. We are not--we can't
be--friends."
"Not friends?" she said, her lip quivering. "I thought I--"
He looked down steadily on her upturned face. His own spoke eloquently
enough. Turning her head away, with fluttering breath, she began to
speak fast and brokenly:
"I, too, have been very lonely. I want a friend whom I might help--who
would help me. Why should you refuse? We are not either of us quite
young; what we undertook we could carry through. Since my husband's
death I--I have been playing at life. I have always been hungry,
dissatisfied, discontented. There were such splendid things going on in
the world, and I--I was just marking time. Nothing to do!--as much money
as I could possibly want--society of course--travelling--and
visiting--and amusing myself--but oh! so tired all the time. And
somehow Canada has been a great revelation of real, strong, living
things--this great Northwest--and you, who seemed to explain it to me--"
"Dear Lady Merton!" His tone was low and full of emotion. And this time
it was he who stooped and took her unresisting hands in his. She went on
in the same soft, pleading tone--
"I felt what it might be--to help in the building up a better human
life--in this vast new country. God has given to you this task--such a
noble task!--and through your friendship, I too seemed to have a little
part in it, if only by sympathy. Oh, no! you mustn't turn back--you
mustn't shrink--because of what has happened to you. And let me, from a
distance, watch and help. It will ennoble my life, too. Let me!"--she
smiled--"I shall make a good friend, you'll see. I shall write very
often. I shall argue--and criticise--and want a great deal of
explaining. And you'll come over to us, and do splendid work, and make
many English friends. Your strength will all come back to you."
He pressed the hands he held more closely.
"It is like you to say all this--but--don't let us deceive ourselves. I
could not be your friend, Lady Merton. I must not come and see you."
She was silent, very pale, her eyes on his--and he went on:
"It is strange to say it in this way, at such a moment; but it seems as
though I had better say it. I have had the audacity, you see--to fall in
love with you. And if it was audacity a week ago, you can guess what it
is now--now when--Ask your mother and brother what they would think of
it!" he said abruptly, almost fiercely.
There was a moment's silence. All consciousness, all feeling in each of
these two human beings had come to be--with the irrevocable swiftness of
love--a consciousness of the other. Under the sombre renouncing passion
of his look, her own eyes filled slowly--beautifully--with tears. And
through all his perplexity and pain there shot a thrill of joy, of
triumph even, sharp and wonderful. He understood. All this might have
been his--this delicate beauty, this quick will, this rare
intelligence--and yet the surrender in her aspect was not the simple
surrender of love; he knew before she spoke that she did not pretend to
ignore the obstacles between them; that she was not going to throw
herself upon his renunciation, trying vehemently to break it down, in a
mere blind girlish impulsiveness. He realised at once her heart, and her
common sense; and was grateful to her for both.
Gently she drew herself away, drawing a long breath. "My mother and
brother would not decide those things for me--oh, _never_!--I should
decide them for myself. But we are not going to talk of them to-day. We
are not going to make any--any rash promises to each other. It is you we
must think for--your future--your life. And then--if you won't give me a
friend's right to speak--you will be unkind--and I shall respect
you less."
She threw back her little head with vivacity. In the gesture he saw the
strength of her will and his own wavered.
"How can it be unkind?" he protested. "You ought not to be troubled with
me any more."
"Let me be judge of that. If you will persist in giving up this
appointment, promise me at least to come to England. That will break
this spell of this--this terrible thing, and give you courage--again.
Promise me!"
"No, no!--you are too good to me--too good;--let it end here. It is
much, much better so."
Then she broke down a little.
She looked round her, like some hurt creature seeking a means of escape.
Her lips trembled. She gave a low cry. "And I have loved Canada so! I
have been so happy here."
"And now I have hurt you?--I have spoilt everything?"
"It is your unhappiness does that--and that you will spoil your life.
Promise me only this one thing--to come to England! Promise me!"
He sat down in a quiet despair that she would urge him so. A long
argument followed between them, and at last she wore him down. She dared
say nothing more of the Commissionership; but he promised her to come to
England some time in the following winter; and with that she had to
be content.
Then she gave him breakfast. During their conversation, which Elizabeth
guided as far as possible to indifferent topics, the name of Mariette
was mentioned. He was still, it seemed, at Vancouver. Elizabeth gave
Anderson a sudden look, and casually, without his noticing, she
possessed herself of the name of Mariette's hotel.
At breakfast also she described, with a smile and sigh, her brother's
first and last attempt to shoot wild goat in the Rockies, an expedition
which had ended in a wetting and a chill--"luckily nothing much; but
poor Philip won't be out of his room to-day."
"I will go and see him," said Anderson, rising.
Elizabeth looked up, her colour fluttering.
"Mr. Anderson, Philip is only a boy, and sometimes a foolish boy--"
"I understand," said Anderson quietly, after a moment. "Philip thinks
his sister has been running risks. Who warned him?"
Elizabeth shrugged her shoulders without replying. He saw a touch of
scorn in her face that was new to him.
"I think I guess," he said. "Why not? It was the natural thing. So Mr.
Delaine is still here?"
"Till to-morrow."
"I am glad. I shall like to assure him that his name was not
mentioned--he was not involved at all!"
Elizabeth's lip curled a little, but she said nothing. During the
preceding forty-eight hours there had been passages between herself and
Delaine that she did not intend Anderson to know anything about. In his
finical repugnance to soiling his hands with matters so distasteful,
Delaine had carried out the embassy which Anderson had perforce
entrusted to him in such a manner as to rouse in Elizabeth a maximum of
pride on her own account, and of indignation on Anderson's. She was not
even sorry for him any more; being, of course, therein a little unjust
to him, as was natural to a high-spirited and warm-hearted woman.
Anderson, meanwhile, went off to knock at Philip's door, and Philip's
sister was left behind to wonder nervously how Philip would behave and
what he would say. She was still smarting under the boy's furious
outburst of the night before when, through a calculated indiscretion of
Delaine's, the notion that Anderson had presumed and might still presume
to set his ambitions on Elizabeth had been presented to him for the
first time.
"My sister marry a mining engineer!--with a drunken old robber for a
father! By Jove! Anybody talking nonsense of that kind will jolly well
have to reckon with me! Elizabeth!--you may say what you like, but I am
the head of the family!"
Anderson found the head of the family in bed, surrounded by novels, and
a dozen books on big-game shooting in the Rockies. Philip received him
with an evident and ungracious embarrassment.
"I am awfully sorry--beastly business. Hard lines on you, of
course--very. Hope they'll get the men."
"Thank you. They are doing their best."
Anderson sat down beside the lad. The fragility of his look struck him
painfully, and the pathetic contrast between it and the fretting
spirit--the books of travel and adventure heaped round him.
"Have you been ill again?" he asked in his kind, deep voice.
"Oh, just a beastly chill. Elizabeth would make me take too many wraps.
Everyone knows you oughtn't to get overheated walking."
"Do you want to stay on here longer?"
"Not I! What do I care about glaciers and mountains and that sort of
stuff if I can't hunt? But Elizabeth's got at the doctor somehow, and he
won't let me go for three or four days unless I kick over the traces. I
daresay I shall."
"No you won't--for your sister's sake. I'll see all arrangements are
made."
Philip made no direct reply. He lay staring at the ceiling--till at last
he said--
"Delaine's going. He's going to-morrow. He gets on Elizabeth's nerves."
"Did he say anything to you about me?" said Anderson.
Philip flushed.
"Well, I daresay he did."
"Make your mind easy, Gaddesden. A man with my story is not going to ask
your sister to marry him."
Philip looked up. Anderson sat composedly erect, the traces of his
nights of sleeplessness and revolt marked on every feature, but as much
master of himself and his life--so Gaddesden intuitively felt--as he had
ever been. A movement of remorse and affection stirred in the young man
mingled with the strength of other inherited things.
"Awfully sorry, you know," he said clumsily, but this time sincerely. "I
don't suppose it makes any difference to you that your father--well, I'd
better not talk about it. But you see--Elizabeth might marry anybody.
She might have married heaps of times since Merton died, if she hadn't
been such an icicle. She's got lots of money, and--well, I don't want to
be snobbish--but at home--we--our family--"
"I understand," said Anderson, perhaps a little impatiently--"you are
great people. I understood that all along."
Family pride cried out in Philip. "Then why the deuce--" But he said
aloud in some confusion, "I suppose that sounded disgusting"--then
floundering deeper--"but you see--well, I'm very fond of Elizabeth!"
Anderson rose and walked to the window which commanded a view of the
railway line.
"I see the car outside. I'll go and have a few words with Yerkes."
The boy let him go in silence--conscious on the one hand that he had
himself played a mean part in their conversation, and on the other that
Anderson, under this onset of sordid misfortune, was somehow more of a
hero in his eyes, and no doubt in other people's, than ever.
On his way downstairs Anderson ran into Delaine, who was ascending with
an armful of books and pamphlets.
"Oh, how do you do? Had only just heard you were here. May I have a word
with you?"
Anderson remounted the stairs in silence, and the two men paused, seeing
no one in sight, in the corridor beyond.
"I have just read the report of the inquest, and should like to offer
you my sincere sympathy and congratulations on your very straightforward
behaviour--" Anderson made a movement. Delaine went on hurriedly--
"I should like also to thank you for having kept my name out of it."
"There was no need to bring it in," said Anderson coldly.
"No of course not--of course not! I have also seen the news of your
appointment. I trust nothing will interfere with that."
Anderson turned towards the stairs again. He was conscious of a keen
antipathy--the antipathy of tired nerves--to the speaker's mere aspect,
his long hair, his too picturesque dress, the antique on his little
finger, the effeminate stammer in his voice.
"Are you going to-day? What train?" he said, in a careless voice as he
moved away.
Delaine drew back, made a curt reply, and the two men parted.
"Oh, he'll get over it; there will very likely be nothing to get over,"
Delaine reflected tartly, as he made his way to his room. "A new country
like this can't be too particular." He was thankful, at any rate, that
he would have an opportunity before long--for he was going straight home
and to Cumberland--of putting Mrs. Gaddesden on her guard. "I may be
thought officious; Lady Merton let me see very plainly that she thinks
me so--but I shall do my duty nevertheless."
And as he stood over his packing, bewildering his valet with a number of
precise and old-maidish directions, his sore mind ran alternately on the
fiasco of his own journey and on the incredible folly of nice women.
Delaine departed; and for two days Elizabeth ministered to Anderson. She
herself went strangely through it, feeling between them, as it were,
the bared sword of his ascetic will--no less than her own terrors and
hesitations. But she set herself to lift him from the depths; and as
they walked about the mountains and the forests, in a glory of summer
sunshine, the sanity and sweetness of her nature made for him a
spiritual atmosphere akin in its healing power to the influence of pine
and glacier upon his physical weariness.
On the second evening, Mariette walked into the hotel. Anderson, who had
just concluded all arrangements for the departure of the car with its
party within forty-eight hours, received him with astonishment.
"What brings you here?"
Mariette's harsh face smiled at him gravely.
"The conviction that if I didn't come, you would be committing a folly."
"What do you mean?"
"Giving up your Commissionership, or some nonsense of that sort."
"I have given it up."
"H'm! Anything from Ottawa yet?"
It was impossible, Anderson pointed out, that there should be any letter
for another three days. But he had written finally and did not mean to
be over-persuaded.
Mariette at once carried him off for a walk and attacked him
vigorously. "Your private affairs have nothing whatever to do with your
public work. Canada wants you--you must go."
"Canada can easily get hold of a Commissioner who would do her more
credit," was the bitter reply. "A man's personal circumstances are part
of his equipment. They must not be such as to injure his mission."
Mariette argued in vain.
As they were both dining in the evening with Elizabeth and Philip, a
telegram was brought in for Anderson from the Prime Minister. It
contained a peremptory and flattering refusal to accept his resignation.
"Nothing has occurred which affects your public or private character. My
confidence quite unchanged. Work is best for yourself, and the public
expects it of you. Take time to consider, and wire me in two days."
Anderson thrust it into his pocket, and was only with difficulty
persuaded to show it to Mariette.
But in the course of the evening many letters arrived--letters of
sympathy from old friends in Quebec and Manitoba, from colleagues and
officials, from navvies and railwaymen, even, on the C.P.R., from his
future constituents in Saskatchewan--drawn out by the newspaper reports
of the inquest and of Anderson's evidence. For once the world rallied to
a good man in distress! and Anderson was strangely touched and
overwhelmed by it.
He passed an almost sleepless night, and in the morning as he met
Elizabeth on her balcony he said to her, half reproachfully, pointing to
Mariette below--
"It was you sent for him."
Elizabeth smiled.
"A woman knows her limitations! It is harder to refuse two than one."
For twenty-four hours the issue remained uncertain. Letters continued to
pour in; Mariette applied the plain-spoken, half-scornful arguments
natural to a man holding a purely spiritual standard of life; and
Elizabeth pleaded more by look and manner than by words.
Anderson held out as long as he could. He was assaulted by that dark
midway hour of manhood, that distrust of life and his own powers, which
disables so many of the world's best men in these heightened, hurrying
days. But in the end his two friends saved him--as by fire.
Mariette himself dictated the telegram to the Prime Minister in which
Anderson withdrew his resignation; and then, while Anderson, with a
fallen countenance, carried it to the post, the French Canadian and
Elizabeth looked at each other--in a common exhaustion and relief.
"I feel a wreck," said Elizabeth. "Monsieur, you are an excellent
ally." And she held out her hand to her colleague. Mariette took it, and
bowed over it with the air of a _grand seigneur_ of 1680.
"The next step must be yours, madam--if you really take an interest in
our friend."
Elizabeth rather nervously inquired what it might be.
"Find him a wife!--a good wife. He was not made to live alone."
His penetrating eyes in his ugly well-bred face searched the features of
his companion. Elizabeth bore it smiling, without flinching.
A fortnight passed--and Elizabeth and Philip were on their way home
through the heat of July. Once more the railway which had become their
kind familiar friend sped them through the prairies, already whitening
to the harvest, through the Ontarian forests and the Ottawa valley. The
wheat was standing thick on the illimitable earth; the plains in their
green or golden dress seemed to laugh and sing under the hot dome of
sky. Again the great Canadian spectacle unrolled itself from west to
east, and the heart Elizabeth brought to it was no longer the heart of a
stranger. The teeming Canadian life had become interwoven with her life;
and when Anderson came to bid her a hurried farewell on the platform at
Regina, she carried the passionate memory of his face with her, as the
embodiment and symbol of all that she had seen and felt.
Then her thoughts turned to England, and the struggle before her. She
braced herself against the Old World as against an enemy. But her spirit
failed her when she remembered that in Anderson himself she was like to
find her chiefest foe.